Fulton-Kehoe D, Burg M A, Lane D S
Department of Preventive Medicine, School of Medicine, State University of New York at Stony Brook 11794-8036.
Public Health Rev. 1992;20(3-4):233-40.
This paper assesses the accuracy of self-reported dates of last mammograms from a postal survey compared to dates of mammograms in medical records.
The subjects included women 50 years of age and older who were members of a local health maintenance organization, had reported ever having a mammogram, and had completed a postal questionnaire about breast cancer screening. The date of last mammogram from the postal surveys was compared to the date in medical records.
Of 78 women who self-reported both the month and year of last mammogram in a postal survey, agreement within 1 month with the medical record data was 62.8% and agreement within 3 months was 75.6%. A total of 32.1% of the subjects underestimated the time since their last mammogram, while only 5.1% overestimated. Based on self-reported dates, 85.9% of the subjects had a mammogram within the last year compared to 76.9% based on medical records. Using medical records as the "gold standard", the sensitivity of self-reported mammogram within the last year versus more than 1 year ago was 98% and the specificity was 56%.
